Enabling “hard” technologies for future wireless

Bearing in mind the evolution of silicon technology, designers also have to consider the evolution of the requirements from advanced wireless systems. Along their path towards next generation broadband wireless access, different standardization bodies (e.g. 3GPP, 3GPP2, IEEE, ETSI-DVB, etc.) have been introducing new standards that enhance their legacy radio access technologies. Examples of recent releases are: 3GPP Release 7 (HSPA+), Release 8 (LTE), Release 9 (LTEAdvanced), 3GPP2 (UMB), IEEE WLAN 802.11 (n, vht), IEEE WMAN 802.16 (d, e, m), ETSI DVB (T2, H, SH, NGH). Emerging and future wireless communication systems are characterized by a clear and steady convergence on both services and technologies. From the service perspective, operators are striving to offer to the users a wide spectrum of rich multimedia services including both interactive and broadcasting, which raise the need to embed complementary technologies (e.g. for uni-cast, multicast, and broadcast transmissions) into the future generations of radio access systems. This context of coexistence and convergence is driving demand for flexible and future-proof hardware architectures offering substantial cost and power savings.